From the beginning, FF had its fair share of quirks. The upstart automaker has never had a permanent Chief Executive Officer, only a temporary "acting" CEO. And the company was initially circumspect about the source of its funding—which ended up being Jia Yueting, founder of Chinese tech giant LeEco, colloquially known as "China's Netflix." Coincidentally, LeEco is also developing an electric car of its own, called LeSee.

Faraday Future's business model is also different from that of any conventional automaker. It's actually pretty revolutionary: Instead of making money selling the cars themselves, FF plans to maintain a fleet of autonomous vehicles that customers can hail when they want to go somewhere—like a self-driving mashup of Uber and ZipCar. The real revenue stream comes from the passenger riding inside. Since they're not driving, they're free to consume media on the car's giant touchscreen dashboard. For a more in-depth explanation of how this could work, see our interview with Faraday Future's head of R&D Nick Sampson from 2015.

This past January, after months of teasers, Faraday Future finally revealed its first concept car at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show. But the concept it showed wasn't at all related to the self-driving family vehicle FF said it was developing. Instead, what showed up at CES was a 1000-horsepower electric supercar fever dream that wasn't even functional. Why? Because the modular platform FF had promised wasn't yet ready. FF's decision to show a dream car, rather than its long-promised production vehicle, was the first in a series of decisions that flummoxed those following the company's bold plans.

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In October, Jalopnik reported that six senior employees had left Faraday Future. A month later, Bloomberg obtained a letter written by Yueting admitting the company "blindly sped ahead" and overextended its limited capital and resources. Then, a week or so after that, news broke that Faraday Future had stopped construction on an ambitious $1 billion factory in Nevada. The startup had reportedly fallen behind on payments to the contractor, leading Nevada State Treasurer Dan Schwartz to call the startup "a Ponzi scheme" in an interview with Fortune.

Towards the end of November, the Financial Times reported that a string of delays were threatening production plans. According to one source the Financial Times spoke with, there's no way FF can meet its 2017 target even if it still manages to bring a working car to the Consumer Electronics Show in January. "If CES goes badly, it's all over," the source said. "It will be a long while before there is a production car."

Only a few weeks later, three different outlets published similar articles in quick succession highlighting further strife at FF. Buzzfeed's report broke first, with sources claiming that, among other issues, FF "had added $300 million in debt to its balance sheet as a result of missed payments to suppliers and vendors." And according to employees Buzzfeed spoke with, the startup had faced financial issues from the beginning.

The next day, Jalopnik published a separate article that reported even further chaos inside the California-based startup. According to one of Jalopnik's sources, at one point Faraday Future estimated its net worth at roughly $100 million—when in reality, $300 million in unrecorded liabilities sunk the company's true value to negative $200 million. This oversight was reportedly discovered only when outside accountants were called in to review the books.

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And just last week, The Verge followed up those articles with a story of its own, calling FF "an electric carmaker on the brink of collapse." The Verge's sources confirmed the mismanagement, lawsuits, and financial issues reported previously, and uncovered that Faraday Future's intellectual property is actually owned by a separate company called "FF Cayman Global," potentially raising questions for investors.

"If you're an investor, you're fucked," a former executive told The Verge. "The company doesn't own the IP." Another ex-executive added, "if they don't find money after CES, they will be out of money by February."

Given Faraday Future's tumultuous year, the nascent automaker's CES debut in early January is truly a make-or-break situation. Whether the company's next chapter is a victory or a defeat remains to be seen.

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